Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

A brush with the law in China

China is in the midst of a serious drink-driving crackdown at the moment following a series of high-profile cases in which drunk-drivers have killed and maimed pedestrians.

The most serious of these resulted in the death penalty being handed down to a 30-year-old company executive in Chengdu, Sichuan province who killed four people while driving under the influence last year.

In Beijing, where China Daily reports 97 people were killed in drunk-driving related accidents in the first half of this year, the police are definitely on the case, as I know from first-hand experience following a small incident last Friday night.

We'd had a good dinner at one of Beijing's very best Thai restaurants – Purple Haze – although not a particularly bibulous one and about 11pm set off for home in my friend's car.

My friend, who was driving, had had a small gin and tonic and over the course of two hours we'd consumed a bottle of white wine between three. On top of a decent meal, none of us could remotely have been described as 'drunk'. In fact, I'm 99pc sure we'd have passed a UK or US breathalyser.

Unfortunately for my friend, who was kind enough to offer drop me home and might well have chosen a different route if he had not, Chinese drink drive laws are a lot stricter than ours – the limit is 0.03pc alcohol/blood compared to 0.08pc in UK and US.

Unaware of this I was pretty confident he'd pass, but after a couple of breaths as we waited for the lights to turn by a section of the third ring-road the alcohol meter was soon lighting up like a Christmas tree,

You know that sinking feeling? Up flashed the red numbers and my friend was being ordered to the side of the road – 'Over here' 'You follow' 'Park car' said the policeman, pointing his fluorescent baton in the direction of a small queue of similarly detained vehicles.

By coincidence we'd been discussing how best to deal with the Chinese police over dinner. In India, unless you'd mowed down a family of six in a rickshaw, a brush with the law could invariably be sorted with a few hundred rupees and the offer to pay an 'on the spot fine' which promptly disappeared into the 'Diwali fund' located in the cop's back pocket.

Not in China. Nor did the 'white man's privilege' – Indian cops rarely bothered to stop foreigners unless they were visibly misbehaving or weaving dangerously around the road – apply on this side of the Himalaya.

My friend, a Canadian who speaks excellent Chinese, didn't even bother to play the 'dumb laowai' card. His Chinese wife, a very high-powered commercial lawyer, said there was no point in even trying to offer to pay a 'spot fine' to make the trouble go away.

No. The policeman was polite, orderly but utterly implacable. There was none of the slightly threatening and overbearing behaviour which police indulge in the world over. I wasn't able to follow the Chinese conversations precisely, but my friend reported it as very 'legalistic' and civilised.

In fact, having been close to being under the limit on the first test the policeman offered my friend another go, to see if he'd sneak under this time. He accepted, but when the second reading was considerably worse than the first, the cop said he'd take the lower of the two anyway.

Having processed the case in a matter of five minutes with a little handheld computer which spewed out an electronically printed ticket – a 500RMB fine (about £50 payable at any bank) and a two-month driving ban – the policeman fairly skipped back to the lights to find his next 'victim'.

I'm told the police receive bonuses for the more convictions they make, though have not been able to check if this is urban myth or actual fact.

Duly chastened we were then left pondering how to get home. Since I don't have a Chinese license (and anyway might have failed my own breath test) and my friend's wife doesn't drive, things were looking pretty thorny for a second or two.

But this being China it didn't take long to find a solution as an enterprising young man stepped forward to offer to drive the 'drunks' home – for an exorbitant fee off course. The cop checked his license, nodded his assent and off we went.

I report this essentially mundane incident for two reasons. First as a warning if you're ever heading this way – remember China has very low drink-drive limits and if you're seriously over that limit you can get 15 days in the slammer.

Secondly, in the interest of balance (since we foreign correspondents are often writing about police corruption/brutality and extra-judicial detentions in China) I'm happy to report these cops were very straight and non-confrontational.

Compared with the American policeman (who stopped me for speeding in Florida a few years back), it must be said that the 'customer service experience' with the Chinese cop was vastly superior.